1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
JP-A 11-191861 (KOKAI) discloses generating a Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) from an input image based on the magnitude and direction of pixel gradients, determining the direction of a bin having the maximum value as an edge direction, and using smoothing means that is suitable for the edge direction and is selected from a plurality of smoothing means set in advance.
With the conventional art mentioned above, however, only the edge direction is taken into consideration for selecting smoothing means, and therefore an adaptive smoothing process cannot be performed for various shapes of edges that are different in intensity and magnitude. This has caused degradation in image quality such as excessive smoothing.